Yesterday I was at the Guggenheim Bilbao experiencing Richard Serra’s Exhibition The matter of Time. The forms are strong and imposing, allowing us to feel and experience space in a new way. What was unexpected, to me, is the way the forms are delicate and subtil, despite their rough appearance.

Serra discovered what is now known as his sculptural language, when, one day, he got annoyed with his own creations ( which at the time consisted mainly of abstract paintings) and threw them all away, burning them to ashes by a river. It was his way of setting himself free (free from pre-conceptions, judgments, expectations and many other conditions). From then on he began to ‘play’ with forms in space.

” I think if you want to make art, at some point you have to suspend judgment, and you have to involve yourself with play and not worry about the outcome.” Richard Serra

Yesterday I went to see the Arco Fair. I really enjoyed it, lots of new artists, and of course, some of the classics such a little Dali drawing or two works by Antoni Tapies. Here are some pictures of my favorite works.

Yesterday I went to see a couple of exhibitions at the new Museum in Lisbon entitle Museum of art, architecture and technology. I was particularly interested in one of the exhibitions, which was a crossing between the fields of art and architecture. However apart from two lovely pieces, the rest really didn’t do it for me. It was, for lack of a better expression, devoid of significance. There was no connection to the heart or to the soul at all. However, there was one photography exhibition that I loved, with some beautiful pictures of Japan. The exhibtion was entitled Archive and Democracy by José Maçãs de Carvalho. Bellow are some pictures of both.

Mr. Miro’s intuitive wonders of starry skies and souls flying, were led by a very strong quest and personal belief. He strongly sustained that painting and poetry ( one and the same thing): the expression of an inner fire. This inner fire was not rational, but had to be discovered by chance. Here are a few of his quotes that deeply characterize him, and paintings from the exhibition I saw yesterday in Serraves, Porto.

” I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music.”

“For me, a picture should be like sparks. It must dazzle like the beauty of a woman or a poem. It must have radiance; it must be like those stones which Pyrenean shepherds use to light their pipes.”

” The more ignoble I find life, the more strongly I react by contradiction, in humour and in an outburst of liberty and expansion.”

” Poetry and painting are done in the same way you make love; it’s an exchange of blood, a total embrace – without caution, without any thought of protecting yourself.”